Thursday, September 20, 2012

Bianca's new tween suite in the attic

Teenagers like their space. I get it. When I was in high school, I needed to be as far away from my parents as I could get, which ended up being the room down in the basement my brother had vacated when he left for college. Even if it did have Star Wars wallpaper, I needed that space.

To prepare for that time when Bianca will most certainly need her space, we decided to create her ultimate teen suite (or for now, her tween suite). Instead of moving downstairs where sneak-outs are much easier, we're putting her up in the attic. I mean, she can either sneak down three stories or have to walk past our room on her way down the creaky stairs. It's fool proof (I hope).

There were two big game rooms up in the attic. Here's the before photo:

So, we added a small attic bathroom. I love the shape of this room. We added white beams to accentuate the angles on the ceiling. And then painted the walls with Sherwin Williams "Stream" to compliment the black-and-white color scheme. And I love that when you open the french doors (frosted glass for privacy but not too much since this is the only real window in the whole attic), all you see is the claw-foot tub:

We opted not to do a shower, just a small soaking tub with this British-telephone faucet for rinsing:

One of my favorite things (and what makes the space extra girly) is this 3-inch hex tiles patterned into daisies:

Because there's not a ton of storage (or any closets for that matter), we had these open shelves constructed on both sides of the tub for holding towels, product, bubble bath, etc.

Because space was at a premium, we did a simple pedestal sink and I found this antique mirror at an antique mall while I was in St. Louis this summer.

Because one of our main concerns was the cooling, we had to add an air conditioning system. Because the house didn't have ducts, we had to use this Fujitsu system that (to be honest) is a little unsightly, but is supposedly the most efficient AC unit out there. Bianca has two zones in her attic space alone. We had this cornice built around the AC and then flanked the bed space (no bed there quite yet, but we're going to give her our old queen mattress) with these bookshelves with built-in nightstands and magnetic boards.

We brought in some of the decor from the bathroom floor by installing these hex tiles inside the inner-facing nightstand spaces and hopefully married the two spaces together. We used a subtle lavender-gray paint color called "Sensitive Tint" for this space. And now Bianca will have plenty of light for reading in bed with these LED sconces.

Right now, they're still installing the hardwood onto the stairs so we haven't been able to move up yet. Soon we'll add the bed and Bianca's super excited about her anthropologie bedding, called "Oh to Dream." Ah, finally, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, even if the tunnel is blocked by unfinished staircases.